Need to knows about rx8s?

Partner is looking at 350z as an upgrade. I love these cars also and think thats awesome, yet I see same year rx8s at around $12-$15k where as the 350z starts at $20k and a good one looks to be around $24k.

I'll do a bit of googling up on the rx8s, but Id like to know of any known major or minor problems that seem to occur! And any recall faults that should be rectified on a second hand car! Hoping I can swing her into a rx8 for a couple of years and save her some money, and then perhaps have a 350z when they come down in price.

skyline_guy_r34 wrote:
Partner-
is looking at 350z as an upgrade. I love these cars also and think thats awesome, yet I see same year rx8s at around $12-$15k where as the 350z starts at $20k and a good one looks to be around $24k.

I'll do a bit of googling up on the rx8s, but Id like to know of any known major or minor problems that seem to occur! And any recall faults that should be rectified on a second hand car! Hoping I can swing her into a rx8 for a couple of years and save her some money, and then perhaps have a 350z when they come down in price.[/quote

Mazda sent out a flyer about the damage you can cause the engines in the rx8 by using synthetic oil. So you have to change oil every 3000kms.
Other than that , havent heard too much

Sometimes, they can be very hard to restart if you do a lot of short "cold" trips.

from friends who've had them from new in the USA (so, won't be the exact same spec), oil consumption was constant, and petrol consumption varied from slightly below Mazda claimed figures, to massively heavier than claimed figures.

Ask the seller of an RX8 what oil they are using.If they say something like "I dunno" then I'd walk away unless it was real cheap, like any rotary, they need the proper care and attention.

Remember, rotaries by design burn a small amount of oil as well as fuel.

There's only a couple of problems from memory when I was looking at buying one, the ignition coils tend to wear, this results in hard starting.And the starter motor in earlier models was a bit weak, also resulting in hard starting.

I think it is fair to say any hard starting mostly arises when you have gone and flooded the engine, engine flooding is fairly easy, start cold engine, back out of drive/garage/whatever, stop still cold engine probably means you just flooded it.

There are various techniques for restarting a flooded rx8. you get cool clouds of smoke when it does come back to life:-)http://www.youtube.com/watch!v=tZVVGOr8jRo

And, you want a Type-S, that is the 6 speed manual.